Travel Tales & Tips, Inspired by The Road

Mastering Slow Life in NZ: Airbnb The Cowshed

We have found places that exist which have no longtitude or latitude.No map, nor compass by which to chart ones course. Places that can only be found when all else is lost… when the city’s white noise of busyness and distractions cease.Here peace begins to unlock hidden chambres of the heart.About relationship and slow life. About appreciating beauty in simplicity. Whispering truths about the fragility of life.And how quickly time flies.Here the silence speaks loudly, on messages that matter. In a way that the slug of 9- 5 city living doesn’t.The land teems with life.Green pastures and rolling hills, running rivers and creeks, fruit trees and vegetable gardens.

We were looking for a place to “crash”, but instead we found a place to call home, albeit for 3 days. Today we found The Cowshed .Idyllic, as though preserved by time. A converted milking shed, lovingly restored with recycled materials and loyal to the original beams and structure from her milking days.

Set on acreage, in the rural gold mining town of Waihi, the land is ripe with avocado trees, honey-bee hives, sheep, horses and free range chickens, I began to wax lyrical within moments of arrival. This was our first time using Airbnb and fortuitously have been spoilt by such a positive introduction to the accommodation platform. The 3 nights spent in Waihi coerced slow life at it’s finest.The Cowshed has a way of making one question any other way to live, than in the moment. We spent nights beside the fire pit toasting marshmallows and telling stories. We watched the sun splay days end colours behind rolling, green hills. Outdoor bathing by the incandescence of candlelight, and felt deep-seeded satisfaction of cooking from ingredients that our hands had gathered.

Often, we are disconnected from our natural food source. Far removed from the origins of where life begins. But not here. Not in Waihi where a river rushes through the town. A creek flows beside the outdoor bath tub at The Cowshed, and chickens lay an abundance of eggs. Here, life abounds.

Our girls fed the chickens in the afternoon with bread, collected their eggs, skipped down the country dirt lane from the hen house back to our rural retreat, and then cooked the same eggs the following morning for breakfast.

There was pride as they announced, “these are the eggs that I gathered yesterday,”. These are the small but significant impressions that foster thankfulness when we work for something. A thankfulness and appreciation that is amiss when you fill your trolley at the supermarket. Rather, grocery shopping is a chore. Another “thing” to do. And when you cook the food bought at the grocery store there is no true sense of accomplishment, unlike our experience of The Cowshed.

There is so much to learn. To love. To live for in these slow paced moments of rural life. The Cowshed was not simply a place for us. It was an experience.